LAUSR

Abstract Compared with traditional mobile Ad hoc networks (MANET) and vehicular Ad hoc networks (VANET), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks have two unique characteristics. First, the UAV network topology changes more frequently and unpredictably. Second, link qualities between UAVs vary significantly with time and space. Existing hop-by-hop routing protocols can neither adapt to the highly dynamic network environment nor fully utilize transmission opportunities in all links with various qualities in UAV networks. In this paper, we propose the Geographic Position based Hopless Opportunistic Routing (GPHLOR) Protocol for UAV networks to solve these problems. GPHLOR combines the advantages of the hopless protocols and the position-based protocols. Benefiting from the idea of hopless, compared with hop-by-hop routing protocols, GPHLOR can fully utilize the transmission opportunities of all links regardless of hop distances and link qualities. While different from existing hopless protocols, GPHLOR selects relays according to each node’s geographic position information without caring about the topology, so it can well adapt to the frequent topology change. Moreover, GPHLOR allows each node to calculate its forwarding priority in a distributed manner according to its local position information. It does not rely on frequent network information measurement and exchange, reducing the protocol overhead. Simulation results show that GPHLOR achieves better performance in packet delivery rate, end-to-end delay, throughput, and overhead compared with existing routing protocols in UAV networks.